Moscow Machination

The few unlucky onlookers on the ground and Koba watched as the black train suddenly exploded and began cluster bombing Guangdong.

Without its dance partner, the CRH300A smashed horizontally into China Rail’s stamping facility. The lack of combustible fuel and the presence of fine German circuit breakers prevented any ugly fires or explosions. But that just wasn’t enough to save the facility from complete devastation.

Meanwhile, Zhen Zhao was 500 feet up in the air still strapped to her seat. The warm wind, the industrial scenery and the sudden turn of events made her light headed. But other than that she was fine. She still had the capability to transmit yellow fever.

The last page on the CRH400A’s manual had explained how the train behaved like a fighter jet’s cockpit. So, in case of May Day situations (not the Communist one), the pilots just had to chant ‘Mao, Mao, Mao’ and their seats would eject safely with a parachute.

Zhen turned her head and noticed that Chang her co-pilot was also floating in the vicinity. A little further she noticed the 800 or so dumbstruck passengers also in dangling from parachutes.

As the parachutes headed for one of the last patches of rice paddies, Zhen realized she was still holding onto the operator manual. She quickly flipped to the last pages of the English, German and French sections. The secret Mao page was missing.

Her relief was dampened at the thought of Wang’s passengers. Wang could burn… but his passengers… Chen Chou yelled out, “The early train to Shenzhen… not popular… mostly Party wives.”

Moscow

Primakov felt elated as he rushed back to the SVR-SB’s headquarters on the outskirts of Moscow. On the way he had an animated conversation with Dementyev, a Moscow State University economist. As he recited the factories hit, Dementyev made rapid calculations and deduced that the damages accrued were about size the of Rhode Island’s GDP.

“Just Rhode Island?” Primakov was sorely disappointed. All that effort and something that wasn’t even an island and sounded like a chicken.

“Yup.”

“That’s not enough…”

“Well, how about ½ of Jacksonville or 3/7^th of Portland…”

“Portland? What is that? Give me big names… New York, Chicago, Philly, Miami… Dallas”

“Err… ok.”

“Seriously Portland…?”

Chapter 4

Lubyanka Square, Moscow

Primakov drove his Volkswagen Jetta across the Moskva River. It was summer in Moscow and the better samples of the Federation’s demographics were on display. Usually seeing a sexy runner in tank tops would have been the highlight of his day, especially considering he spent most of his time in a half abandoned technology park out in suburban Skolkovo. But everything was gorgeous today, right from the traffic to the weather to the Muscovites and especially his sweet mission.

Things hadn’t felt this way in a long time. He had resigned himself to heading the SVR-SB and its moronic missions across Siberian shitholes and the raging republics. Even on the rare ‘stoking a revolution’ missions, the SVR-SB was usually reduced to bombing sewage treatment plants. Plus, to lay the ground work, one of his men had to get a job at these places. Modern facilities in Tbilisi and Africa were generally fine. It was the older ones like Kiev and Helsinki and Warsaw that made his men squirm.

And then Crimea had happened.

Ever since the Russo-Ukrainian split his life had taken a turn for the better. He had been asked to plan several hypothetical missions in Kiev, ranging from abducting aerospace engineers to assassinating the neo-Nazi ministers to even modifying the weather to ratchet radioactive dust from suburban Chernobyl. In the past year alone, had submitted eighteen plans to the SVR for approval. On a couple of occasions some SVR Major had even invited Primakov to the SVR headquarters for further discussions. But in the end nothing had transpired… at least to Primakov’s knowledge.

Then a month ago, the SVR had instructed him to meet up with some Japanese dude in a Moscow café. Three minutes into that meeting, Primakov was stunned by the insane Japanese man. Perhaps his cute Japanese interpreter was insane. He had stepped out of the café and made an urgent call to the SVR hotline to report this Japanese dude and his vixen — for trying to destabilize a friendly nation. After being put on hold for fifteen minutes, an irritated SVR guy had used unimaginative language and instructed him to blow the Japanese guy if necessary.

Needless to say he had returned to the eagerly waiting Japanese duo. The interpreter was particularly happy to see him come back. Primakov listened to their odd request again to make sure nothing was being lost in translation.